ase, and the
mysterious powers which it developed in the persons attacked,
illustrating his statements by reference to the case of his own
daughter. He was evidently a firm believer in the reality of the
sickness, but would not say to what agency he ascribed the phenomena
of second sight and the ability to speak strange languages, which were
its most remarkable symptoms.

During the day we happened to call upon the ispravnik or Russian
governor, and in course of conversation mentioned the "Anadyrski bol,"
and related some of the stories which we had heard from Paderin. The
ispravnik--skeptical upon all subjects, and especially upon this--said
that he had often heard of the disease, and that his wife was a
firm believer in it, but that in his opinion it was a humbug, which
deserved no other treatment than severe corporal punishment. The
Russian peasantry, he said, were very superstitious and would believe
almost anything, and the "Anadyrski bol" was partly a delusion and
partly an imposition practised by the women upon their male relatives
to further some selfish purpose. A woman who wanted a new bonnet, and
who could not obtain it by the ordinary method of teasing, found it
very convenient as a _dernier ressort_ to fall into a trance state and
demand a bonnet as a physiological necessity. If the husband still
remained obdurate, a few well-executed convulsions and a song or two
in the so-called Yakut language were generally sufficient to bring him
to terms. He then related an instance of a Russian merchant whose wife
was attacked by the "Anadyrski bol," and who actually made a winter
journey from Gizhiga to Yamsk--a distance of 300 versts--to procure a
silk dress for which she had asked and which could not be elsewhere
obtained! Of course the women do not always ask for articles which
they might be supposed to want in a state of health. If they did, it
would soon arouse the suspicions of their deluded husbands, fathers,
and brothers, and lead to inconvenient inquiries, if not to still more
unpleasant experiment, upon the character of the mysterious disease.
To avoid this, and to blind the men to the real nature of the
deception, the women frequently ask for dogs, sledges, axes, and other
similar articles of which they can make no possible use, and thus
persuade their credulous male relatives that their demands are
governed only by diseased caprice and have in view no definite object.
Such was the rationalistic explanati